3M Company has introduced a wide variety of products and services to help consumers and office workers communicate, organize, and manage their information. For example, Post-it® Flags, have proven to be extremely useful for marking specific areas of documents, magazines, books, and the like. In general, the flag (also referred to as an “index”), is a polymeric or paper based material having a first and second end portions and first and second opposing major surfaces. The flag includes a repositionable adhesive one of a first or a second portion of its first or second major surface. In a polymeric flag, the first portion is typically transparent and is larger in size than the second portion, which is generally brightly colored. A plurality of flags is releaseably adhered to one another in a fan-fold (also referred to as “z-stacked”) configuration such that the repositionable adhesive in alternating flags is at alternating ends of the stack.
The flags have been integrated into writing instruments such as pens and highlighters. For example, 3M Company sells Post-it® highlighters and Post-it® pens. These integrated writing instruments provide a portable and convenient way to have flags readily available for a user wherever (s)he goes. Sheet material dispensers such as for flags integrated into pens and highlighters are described in, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 6,719,472 (Windorski et al.), U.S. Pat. No. 7,144,870 (Windorski et al.), and U.S. Pat. No. 7,322,766 (Erlebacher et al.), and US Patent Publication No. 2005/0191114 (Smith et al.), and in Japanese Patent Application Publication Nos. JP2000025385 and JP11139081.
While the foregoing products are very useful, there is a desire to those skilled in the art for continued innovation of consumer related products.